This survey, conducted in 2023, documents the working realities of 81 resident doctors across India’s leading teaching hospitals, including KEM Hospital Mumbai, AIIMS New Delhi, Government Medical College Jammu, Dr. RML Hospital Delhi, and Tata Medical Center Kolkata. Covering physical health, mental wellbeing, working conditions, institutional culture, and professional grievances, the survey presents one of the most direct data-driven assessments of resident welfare to emerge from the Indian medical community in recent years.
The full report can be accessed here.
The findings are unambiguous. More than half of respondents reported working over 12 hours daily, with nearly one in five averaging more than 16 hours. Anxiety and anger each affected 55.6% of respondents; depression, 45.7%. Suicidal ideation was reported by 13.6%, over a single three-month window. Over 60% experienced some form of verbal or institutional abuse, and 65% acknowledged that their deteriorating health directly compromises the care they deliver to patients. Despite this, over 40% said they would not seek professional help, reflecting the deeply entrenched stigma around mental health within medical culture.
Respondents were given a list of concrete workplace improvement suggestions and asked to select those they would recommend to their institution. The most widely supported change was relieving residents from scheme-related administrative work. Report typing being delegated to clerical staff was the second most common recommendation. Daily treatment sheet writing being replaced by pre-printed checkboxes was another high-priority item.
This report synthesizes the survey data across nine domains, namely demographics, working hours, sleep and nutrition, mental health, harassment, institutional ratings, workplace recommendations, patient care impact, and respondent engagement, to present a complete picture of where the system is failing its own workforce. What emerges is not a story of individual struggle but a structural crisis that demands coordinated, urgent response from hospital administrations, regulatory bodies, and medical education policymakers alike.
The evidence assembled in this survey points to a conclusion that is uncomfortable but unavoidable: there exists a serious, widespread, and systemic problem with the working conditions and mental health of resident doctors in India. Across institutions spanning Mumbai, Delhi, Jammu, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and beyond, the responses converge on the same themes: too many hours, too little sleep, too much administrative burden, too little protection from abuse, and almost no accessible support for mental health. The 13.6% who reported suicidal ideation are not outliers they are an urgent signal that the current system is failing its most essential workers at the most fundamental level.
The path forward requires action on multiple fronts simultaneously, and the responsibility for that action does not rest with resident doctors alone.
- Hospital administrations must enforce duty-hour limits and deploy adequate non-medical support staff to eliminate the administrative burden that currently falls on clinical trainees.
- Medical councils and regulatory bodies must formalize grievance mechanisms and mandate accessible, confidential mental health resources in all teaching hospitals.
- Institutional culture must shift from one in which abuse is normalized as a rite of training to one where respectful mentorship is the accepted and enforced standard.
- PoSH committees must be strengthened, made genuinely independent, and empowered to act without institutional interference.
- Resident welfare bodies must be given real authority, regular access to administration, and protection from the peer discouragement that currently silences those who attempt to raise concerns.
- Medical education policy must recognize resident wellbeing not as a peripheral concern but as a direct determinant of patient safety and healthcare quality.
The resident community, as demonstrated by the engagement data in this survey, is ready and willing to be part of this transformation. What is needed now is institutional will to match that readiness. Healthcare systems are only as strong as the people who run them. The data in this report is a call to action.
Disclaimer: AI tools were used to analyse the data & generate the report. Survey design & data collection did not involve any use of AI tools.